Since then, ODOT officials have been quiet about what they’re cooking up. But the private sector continues to flood the market with devices that their inventors promise will reinvent commuting.

The latest entry in the race to the connected car is a $150 gadget called the Mojio, which plugs into your vehicle and promises to turn your daily drive into a game that offers up tangible rewards for good driving “moments.”

Plug the device – which looks like an orange-and-white miniature of a “Star Trek” shuttle – into your ride, link it to your smart phone and almost any car becomes a smart car.

San Francisco-based Mojio said its gadget will not only provide a wide-range of services -- from conducting real-time analytics on a vehicle’s mechanics to helping parents track the movement of teenage drivers -- it will reward drivers for changing their driving habits in ways that help fight congestion and clean up the air.

For instance, Oregonians are driving less than they were before the Great Recession.

But traffic data provided by ODOT show everyone seems to be hitting the road at about the same time every day, which is creating some nightmarish congestion as the job market improves.

Say you leave for work at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., or meet a fuel-efficiency goal, that’s a “moment.”

Mojio, in conjunction with a local retail partner, would send you a reward. Maybe that smartphone voucher for a free coffee. Or a "half off" e-coupon at Jiffy Lube.

“We’re not ready to discuss the brands or the reward moments at this point,” said Darren Roberts, a Mojio spokesman. “But the moments and the rewards will make sense. They will be matched up to the appropriate time of day and the activity.”

Roberts added that the Mojio is expected to be the only open-source connected-car solution when it launches in May.

“The open platform will allow people to design their own apps for cars,” he said. “You could do anything from creating a program to make your car speak like Sofia Vergara to offering up a really great trip planner.”

For the most part, the efforts have sought to punish motorists for causing traffic jams. (London, Stockholm and other cities hit motorists with various “congestion charges” for traveling during peak hours.)